Monday, February 21, 2011

Vegan Tuna

This last July my entire family went to Washington, D.C. to honor my grandpa Dave's life with a ceremony at the Arlington Memorial. It was a huge experience for us, since we have NEVER all gotten on an airplane together, nor have we traveled much as a family in general. I'm not going to talk right now about the heartwarming moments shared or the memories we made together in the furnace that envelopes the east coast in the summer. No, right now I'm going to reference something that happened on the airplane on our way to commemorate our wonderful David Rudolph Hessler.

We were flying peacefully on our way, above Colorado or one of those other states that you fly over on your way to Virginia. I was consoling my fear of flying (every five minutes I re-remembered that there was NOTHING. HOLDING. THE PLANE. UP. I feel sick even TALKING about it right now) by spending my non-existent money on anything and everything available on the in-flight service screen in front of me. Bloody Mary? Check. Entourage episode? Check. Club soda, cookie, pretzels? Check, hell-mutha-fuckin-yes check, aaaaand check! I perused the food-cube options: something chicken-y (even though this was in my pre-vegan days I wasn't a big fan), a hummus and vegetable dealio, or a tuna spread (in my pre-vegan days I WAS a big fan. I ate a tuna melt at LEAST once a week for about two years). Hm. Tuna? On an airplane? Well... there weren't many options... and there was a plane FULL of people, so odds are that a fair amount of passengers around me had been happily smearing tuna on crackers and our nostrils had remained blissfully unaware. What the hell, tuna it is! I received both my food-cube and a weary grunt from the flight attendant who'd been running back and forth down the aisle to my seat every five minutes with my overzealous free beverage requests. I unpacked my tuna can, crackers, some nuts, probably more cookies, and I don't remember what else from the lil cardboard box and proudly got to work putting tuna on everything I just listed. I generously waved my creations in front of my sister's and mother's faces to my left, offering up my precious tuna yum-yums and securing my status in sainthood, unaware that their faces turned green once the aroma settled into their breathing space. Suddenly an abrupt movement startled me from the seat behind and to my left, as my sister Hannah ripped her seat-belt from her lap and jumped to her feet.

"DON'T YOU EVER EVER EVER EVER ORDER TUNA ON AN AIRPLANE AGAIN!!!!"

The pilot dropped his controls and scrambled out of his seat; the man holding up the bathroom line shoved out of the tiny stall with his pants still around his ankles; the paralyzed woman at the back of the plane broke into a trot straight out of her wheel chair; and the nursing baby let go of his mother's teat and latched on with his infant biceps to the crowd's coattails as every single person on the plane rushed to point a finger at me in unanimous disgust.

And that, my friends, is how I earned the super attractive nickname (Big) Tuna.

Yaaaay.


Vegan talk:
Seafood was always one of the foods that I had a hard time letting go. It always made me uncomfortable that the ONE animal I enjoyed eating was also my spirit animal. (Still not sure what that says about me....) When I went vegan I was worried that it'd be too painful breaking up with tuna melts, rainbow rolls, and bagels with lox. The truth is, I haven't missed them a bit. Oh okay, I won't lie and say that I don't vividly remember how delicious seared ahi salads are, but it's just not enough to make me tempted anymore. I struggled for months with giving up my diet of finned-friends and cheese, but ultimately after I sought out the hard-to-hear facts about the meat/poultry/seafood/dairy industries... well... something finally clicked into place in my brain and it became impossible for me to further make-believe that the salmon in my pasta never had a face or that the cream in my Starbucks coffee didn't come from the udders of a miserable, childless cow. I'm continuously learning kinder ways to exist on this planet, and I'm constantly freaked out by the endless list of everyday items that contain animal products. I downloaded this great "app" for my phone that's simply called "Animal-free" and just lists alphabetically a bajillion animal ingredients and a bajillion vegan ingredients, so when you're looking at what a product contains you can reference it really quickly. It's a great app because when you click on a word it pulls up a whole description of it and where it is commonly found and such, so it's helped me to navigate shampoo ingredients and other stuff that would otherwise just look like jibble-jabble to me. Yay Android app for helping to make vegan-product hunting more user-friendly!!

Thursday, February 17, 2011

THE FAINTING INCIDENT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF9-sEbqDvU

My friend Ari sent me the link above, saying that it reminded her of me. (You gotta watch the clip in order to understand what the hell I'm talking about, just so you know.)

I can't believe I've gone my whole life never relating to anyone or anything on the level that I instantly connected with Marcel the talking shell. The ONLY thing I didn't say "Yes! Yes! Me too, Marcel!" to was when he said he goes hang-gliding on Doritos for adventure. I would never go hang-gliding, or do anything for adventure for that matter. But... yeah, everything else, spot on.

I laughed especially hard when he said he once fainted from smelling a dirty sneaker because... well... I'm only slightly less pathetic. Or maybe exactly the same amount of pathetic. I'm about to tell you about THE FAINTING INCIDENT.

Years ago when I was in college ( I like to say it that way because it makes me feel cool), I was having lunch with Bex in the University Center on the UCSB campus. We were sitting at a table in the food court, and she was telling me a story. I was being an avid listener, until I banged my elbow on the wooden armrest of my chair. At that point, an electric jolt of intense pain started bouncing along all the nerve highways (scientific term) between my elbow and brain. My eyes went dead, my bottom jaw lost its muscle band, and my mouth formed quiet "Ow"s every three seconds. Bex gave me exactly the kind of look warranted and asked was I okay? "Ow. O-ow. O-o-o-w...." My voice started getting lower, slower, and more earthen. Bex's eyebrows raised in concern just as I face-planted into my sandwich.

...

Oh, what a nice dream. I guess I'll wake up now. Wait what time is it? I opened my eyes and found them staring at my hands in my lap. That's weird, I'm sitting? Where am I? I suppose I should lift my head from its perch on my chest hereOh. "Hey Bex, um, I was just dreaming."

"(single white female)? (SINGLE WHITE FEMALE)?!!? What the hell just happened? Are you OKAY?!!" Bex was next to me, clearly just as confused as I was.

"Uh, yeah, I just hit my elbow and then... it hurt and then...." **weak laughter** I looked around to see a bunch of old people staring at me and one of them shouting that an ambulance was on its way. Awesome. "No, I'm fine, I'm fine, really. God this is so embarrassing." I wanted to run and hide in my shell like Marcel. I wanted everyone to stop looking at me. And I wanted to eat my sandwich. Unfortunately, the paramedics arrived and I had to hang my blushing head and take me and my sandwich-less tummy outside to be checked out. All my vitals were good (doctor talk, no?) and they started asking if I'd been dieting and not eating enough lately. They asked specifically if I'd eaten anything that day. This was around 1:00 or so in the afternoon. My mouth spewed the truth out before I had a chance to think about it. "Oh yeah, let's see... I had a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich... a chocolate chip cookie...a bag of pretzels... like four pieces of cheese... some sushi... a small dog... a stereo... OH, and I was ABOUT to eat a sandwich," I hinted, thumbing behind me in the direction of my fifth meal that day. A moment of silence passed in honor of the fact that everyone was judging me and trying not to laugh.

"Well, miss.... I guess you just fainted from the pain??" The upward lilt at the end of his sentence hung in the air like an unwanted Cheshire Cat's grin. I wanted to take the paramedic's question mark and rap him in the nose with it, HARD. I turned to leave, barely hearing the murmured "take it easy"s and such behind me, eager to put the whole incident behind me.

And I have, really. I haven't fainted since, although I've now developed a FEAR of fainting, so that's cool. The whole thing would've been forgotten years ago, if it weren't for my darling brother's reenactments to keep the running joke going. About every eight months, he'll casually walk by me in a room, pretend to run into something and bonk his elbow, and then he'll dutifully go limp and collapse to the ground in a heap of dead weight. **round of applause please**

UNRELATED NOTE ABOUT VEGANISM: I'm trying to get away from eating so much soy. At the restaurant where I work, I've been spoiling myself with Daiya mozzarella-style vegan cheese, tasty blackened "mock" chicken, tofu sauteed in tahini-ginger sauce, and "milk" shakes made from a soy-based vegan ice cream. All of these things except for the Daiya cheese are chock-full of soy soy soy soy soy. I think all the research done on the effects of high levels of soy products in a person's diet are as of yet inconclusive and wishy-washy at best, but I've read in numerous sources that the phytoestrogen content might be harmful to breast cancer survivors and then might not be good for post-menopausal women, so I think it might mean that everyone should keep an eye on their soy intake. I'm just scared that in the next five years researchers are gonna publish the headline "OH SHIT! OUR BAD! SOY KILLS PEOPLE! SORRY, GUYS!"Juuuuust in case, I'm gonna start paying more attention to what has soy in it. Bex reminded me the other day how important it is to steer clear of ANY processed foods whenever possible, and I am starting to get back to the simplistic vegan roots that got me excited when I first started my journey with the vegan lifestyle. Just a couple days of whole grains, legumes, and lots of veggies, and I'm already feeling like a more efficient machine. Thanks Bex!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The longest five hours, thirty-nine minutes, and thirty-five seconds of my life

Books are so great, you know? It's so magical when the words you read are powerful enough to inspire you to make a direct translation into your own life. I can think of a small handful of written feats that have kindled a bright enough fire within me that its warmth still flowed through me long after the pages had burnt out. **moment of silence for the emo-ness of that sentence**

I'll never forget playing in my mother's old flower garden, trying hard to get lost in the six-inch tall poppies in a passionate remix of The Secret Garden. And of course there was the day I decided to eat tomato-and-mayo sandwiches (I hadn't converted to Vegenaise yet) and hide under the piano while writing copious notes about the doings of my siblings. Our living/dining room area didn't actually allow for me to be even remotely hidden, so in a very un-Harriet-the-Spy fashion I made eye contact with my subjects while writing smack-talk about them. However, I must give the highest possible credit to the miracle-worker slash author Christopher McDougall for drenching his book Born to Run in SO much lighter fluid that when a reader's spark of interest hits it, no amount of "The Ends" can possibly put the flame out. In fact, literary shaman McDougall actually convinced ME that not only did I WANT to run a marathon, but that I was MADE to run marathons, and denying that would be denying the very nature of my being. 

So on June 10th, 2010, I participated in the San Diego Rock 'N' Roll Full Marathon. 

I've always been a very big "sitter." By that I mean that my very favorite activities could all be done while sitting on a couch, or--oooh! better yet!-- sitting cross-legged on my bed with my blankets all tucked around me and my pillow propped up behind me!! God yes!! These activities aren't exactly what one might call "cool," but I figured that the frizziness factor of my hair had automatically canceled me out for that club at birth. Sticker collecting (raging boner!), letter-writing (boing!), drawing (!!), painting (!!!), singing along to Jewel while feeling compassion(!!!!)-- you get the point. I've been called "grandma" since age eleven because I'd pledged myself to a life of bed-rest and muscle atrophy (wait, do you have to first HAVE muscles in order for them to atrophy? And can you truly use that word as a noun AND a verb?!!) So you see, for someone to summon the Holy Spirit down on me and not only make me WALK again but fully try to go out there and kinda jog a little bit...??!!! Now THAT is some perSUASive writing, my friends!

I started out really gung-ho about the training. It was pretty much three shorter runs a week and one long one, and every week the lengths of all these would increase. Duh. You get it. I'll never forget the point when I started feeling a little bit of "runner's high" during the ten-mile runs. It was a feeling of pure exhilaration and joy to be alive. Wait, damn, that sounds really nice right now. Shit, maybe I should try that aga--NOOO! CHRISTOPHER MCDOUGALL GET YOUR WIZARDRY PEN OUTTA MY HEAD!! Anyway, **deep breaths** in training your longest run is supposed to be twenty miles, and then you start decreasing your mileage until the 26.2-mile event. I was religiously following my training schedule up until the 14-mile run. After that, I started cheating on future me's success and pretending that whatever, it's fiiiiine, you don't reeeeeally need to do all that training bullshit. All of a sudden, my "runs" started turning into nice times to walk a lil bit and talk on the phone or listen to music. Running even ONE mile without stopping suddenly became not only impossible but en-TIRE-ly unnecessary. No worries! It's only 26.2 miles! If I get tired I'll just walk, but thanks for being concerned about how the fuck I'm going to pull it off.

When race day came, I was still in a deep fog of my reality's denial. I had rented my sister Hannah out as my personal assistant for the event, and we were up at 3 AM to get to the starting line. What we didn't realize was that we would be separated as soon as we got to the designated meeting place. I got on a bus with all the other competitors, while my Hannah, my sunscreen, and my innocence were left sadly behind in the pitch black parking lot. Hence, my motivation, my top four layers of skin, and my ability to dream were compromised horribly.

It took probably 45-minutes to start all the different waves of runners. When it was my turn to go, I remember feeling SO ready and SO capable and was SO wrong. 

The beginning of the race was great. I was all pumped up on endorphins and actually pushing myself for once. The miles seemed to just FLY by. I actually remember thinking-- and I'd like to single out the twelve cells of my brain that had this thought and wring their little cell necks-- that it was going by TOO fast, and I was sad that this memorable experience was going to be over all too quickly. BWAhahahahaha. After mile seven, I started walking for a minute. But hey--wait! Son of a bitch! The SECOND I started walking, five hundred people passed me, and it seemed like the entire race was getting away from me. The next five miles went along this way. Every time I tried to walk for any length of time, I got peer-pressured into (okay I'll stop calling it "running" now, I know I'm not fooling anyone) jogging immediately again for fear of falling behind. At some point I finally figured out that the reason there were 400-pounders waddling up the hill in front of me was NOT something to sob about dehydratedly. They were participants of the HALF marathon, and our paths were clumsily intertwined every once in a while just to wig me out. Phew. Just saying. Somewhere in the next four miles I accidentally dropped my ego, so I no longer cared when people ambled cheerily past me as I slowed to a walk. At mile sixteen, I remember a really nice woman had started running--oh okay jogging-- next to me, and she remarked that she was so impressed with my pace because she was just doing the RELAY and only had to go a few miles, and yay for me for keeping up with her. Unfortunately, that caused some inexplicable psychological effect within my sunburned brain, and I instantly fell behind her neon Nike soles. I bet SHE felt awkward. In this same memorable mile, I encountered another relay-er. This girl, however, could not have made any remarks to me had she wanted to. She was stumbling along so brokenhearted, like her cheating boyfriend were tottering nakedly and red-handedly behind her. However "red" wasn't the color that popped into my mind. No, no that was definitely brown. In honor of the fact that this girl had straight-up shit her white Adidas running pants and was still pushing her pooed-on thighs to take her to the freshly laundered next runner on her relay team. I wanted to... laugh? No, maybe... cry? For her? Well, I think what I REALLY wanted was to be able to point to her soiled bottom and have someone smile at me and wink, and that would have been enough. However, the only participants around me were the purple Team in Training people, and they were essentially the Mean Girls of marathons. Those broads have the largest-yet-still-exclusive clique I've ever seen. They have hundreds of thousands of fans stationed all along the race course, fans who make sure to specifically ONLY encourage their girls in purple and no one else: "Yay Molly! Team in Training! Woo! Go Sandra! Fuck you girl in generic yellowish top! Shoulda worn your sunscreen!"A few hours of their incessant cheerleading and I felt like Jan Brady.

The last six miles of that marathon.... Well, some unholy things started happening. For starters, I was loopy as fuck. All of a sudden, the only thing that made me feel even remotely human was to develop Tourette's and audibly mutter four-lettered words with every pounding footfall. I'd long ago given up on impressing anyone, so I didn't bother to care about how this might affect the runners on either side of me. My skin had taken on a scary beet-like hue, due to the fact that I'm semi-albino and don't EVER leave the house without two layers of SPF 50 forming a halo of forcefield over my whole body. That is, of course, unless I'm about to trample sweatily into direct sunlight for almost six hours. That's when I don't wear ANY sunscreen. 

I had my phone on me for the race to use for music, but when the battery started to die I turned it off to conserve it so I could at least let Hannah know when to be ready with my bodybag. The last two miles were so excruciating that I can't even remember them lucidly. It's like the dream scene for me in Gladiator when Maximus is running his hands through the field of tall wispy weeds. I remember the white sand under me. I remember the bay of water to my right, and the hill of thousands of pin points of color that were actually people cheering for the people already where I wanted to be. And I remember texting Hannah that I didn't think I could finish and could she come get me, please, and then my phone died. Walking was not an option. Walking equaled shooting, stabbing pains up through the bottoms of my feet like my feet had gone in to labor and were about to pop out little toe babies. Hobbling was the only way to go. I was in a pack of fellow hobblers. We shared an unspoken bond of artistry in the way we were contorting our bodies to find some tiny air bubble of comfort between our shrieking joints. Our shadows put Quasimoto to shame. 

When I finally, finallyfinallyfinally started nearing that last mile marker, I heard someone say that the finish line was that big white tent over there. Wait really? That one right there? I could DO this! I forced my legs to topple over one another at an increased rate, and my mantra of F-words started sputtering out of my blistered lips in a stream of pep talk that would've made Hitler cross himself. It turns out that "someone" was wrong. The white tent had NOTHING to do with the finish line. Luckily I was so mortally defeated from the previous four hours that I couldn't even feel the appropriate letdown at having even farther to go. I then saw the yellow banner, the giant timer, and the finish line. I reached within, to that place that people tell you they reach to for really hard things, and I managed to push myself to what I thought was a sprinting pace (Hannah nicely said later it was more like I was "falling," so I'm sure it actually resembled a dead-leg "trip"). Somewhere in the fog of my awareness Hannah's face materialized to my left holding my new red shiny camera, so I gave a liar thumbs up and attempted to smile at it, right before I heaved my corpse across the finish line. 5:39:35. Five numbers I'll NEVER forget, no matter HOW painful their memory is. Hannah didn't get that picture, by the way. She DID get several pictures of a skinned pig running with her eyes closed and a soft accepted frown framing her flaming red chin. Er, yeah, no I guess that was me. 

The aftermath: I wasn't acceptable to go into public for nearly two weeks. Between the sheets of dead skin flaking off every inch of me and the gargoyle-scrunch-foot shuffle I used to get around.... Let's just say if I went to work in the Italian restaurant I managed, people would be shrieking, shielding their children's eyes, and barfing up their garlic balls. 

It's been eight months, and I still get this icky feeling every time I think about that day. I know I should feel some huge sense of pride and accomplishment for finishing but... I guess I just feel like I failed. It seemed like yet another example of my procrastination and half-assing of everything I ever do. I guess what it did give me, though, was something I'd never known about myself before. It showed me that I am not a quitter. Despite the excruciating pain and heat and delirium I was experiencing that day, I kept that agreement with myself that I was going to finish that #$%*ing marathon even if it were the LAST thing I ever did. And trust me, I thought it would be. 

Here I am, fresh-skinned, able to walk, and you better believe that I'm sitting here cross-legged on my couch, wrapped safely in my blanket of pink fleece comfort, typing this blog to you. I might still be a "sitter"-- the marathon definitely didn't change that-- but in hindsight it was probably the catalyst that led me to take my sitting to Encinitas in search of a better me. So... thanks Christopher McDougall, you sorcerous composer of words-- thanks for tricking me into thinking I could run a marathon so that I could find the strength inside me to change what I didn't like about my life. I pray to God you never use your powers for evil.  

On a RELATED note: Born to Run highlighted the life of ultramarathoner Scott Jurek, who's apparently the best runner in the infinite universe. And guess what? That's right, he's vegan! If only he were a ginger, then I would find him and make him be the mythical ginger vegan boyfriend I'm holding out for. Anyway, I found his blog: http://www.scottjurek.com/blog/ Check it out!


Tuesday, February 15, 2011

No wheels for me, thanks

I think it's time to address one of those biggies in my life that makes up a large part of my eccentricity. (Writing about myself has really made me realize that I...am...BANANAS.) The issue I'm about to bring to light is probably the thing that makes me feel MOST uncomfortable when people ask me about it. If I had the option of A.) being asked out of the blue about this thing I'm about to tell you OR B.) having to forego all punctuation and capitalization for a month (dear GOD no!)...I think... well, okay I'm starting to sweat just thinking about it, but yeah, I'd have to go for option B.


Idon'tknowhowtodrive. 

What? Hm? Were you saying something? No? Just me?

Damnit. Okay so yeah, I'm nearing my 25th birthday and I am still as unable to operate a car as I was on my FIRST birthday. I think the fact that I just called it "operating" a car is pretty hopeless in itself. I'm not exaggerating, either. And I know half of you are nodding your heads emphatically out there, so THANKS Hannah (rude). I hate having to explain this part of myself. I think because I don't even really know how it's gotten to this point. I remember taking Drivers' Ed in high school and, well, sucking at it. The ONLY thing I remember from that class is that one real-life video they show you, called Red Pavement I think. And from THAT all I remember is the Worst Thing Ever fucking imprinted in my memory: a post-accident photo taken of a baby's SHOE on the road right next to the baby's SEVERED FOOT. I don't know what YOU guys were thinking after that, but I promptly threw up on my feet and then whispered to them that I was sorry because not only were they covered in vomit, but they were also going to have to take me everywhere I ever went from that point on in life.

I like to kick it OLD school. You know, like if I wanna go hunter-gathering and collect me some Hickory Smoked Tofurky Deli Slices from Trader Joes. No worries, it's only three miles away? Perfect! Let's just pack up a lil travel sack here of water, wallet, and deodorant (you're WELCOME) and make a journey of it! It only takes one-and-a-half-to-two hours!!!

Seriously.

This is how I've been living for the past seven years, and it's now the only way I'm comfortable living. I feel SO awkward slash waste-of-a-person-ish when I have to ask someone for a ride somewhere. UGH! And of course, realistically, that happens way more often than I'd ever like to admit. Because of that, I never like to get a ride in someone's car unless I really REALLY need it. If you offer to give me a ride to the grocery store-- because hey, you could use a couple things from there too-- I'll cock my head to the side Rainman-style, mutter something unhelpful about liking the weather, grab my canvas sack and scissor-kick out the door before you have the chance to say "Uh...you're weird." Right after, you'll drive past me when I've made it twenty-five yards down the road and you'll offer me a ride, and of course I'll get in. I'm not STUPID.

Grocery shopping this way is always an interesting experience. You REALLY have to want something in order to lug it with you for an hour on your return trip home. Well, and then there's toilet paper. That's kind of the only GIVEN. With anything else, I'll compromise if it means I can still get my 8-lb watermelon and 12-lb sack of potatoes. This method leads to many real-life quizzes of my alcoholism. This scenario has ACTUALLY come up on numerous occasions: Cabernet Sauvignon from Paso Robles, only $4.99?!! And it has a picture of a lion wearing shoes on the label? Get outta here!! Bye bye laundry detergent (lame!), HELL-O my purple tannined friend (yay!)!! You can frequently find me sporting both a dirt-tinged T-shirt and a dark burgundy wine mouth.

I wonder if moving to Encinitas and starting this trend in my life of actually DOING things will inspire me to naturally take that next step and learn to drive? All I know is that if I ever DO graduate into big-girl pants and swap my savvy California ID (only SLIGHTLY embarrassing when the club bouncer has to check it, by the way) for the real deal, I hope I always maintain my appreciation for the simple beauty of relying on what God gave you to get what you want. No no, I don't mean like shake-what-yo-mama gave you, I mean your own two feet. You're so silly.

SPEAKING of Trader Joes, though, I'd like to give them props on expanding their deli section a wee bit to encompass a couple more vegan options. It's still frustrating to see so many things that would be SO yummy without the chicken in it or the gorgonzola cheese (the Brussels Sprouts salad that had secret cheese hiding somewhere in the ingredients made me cry out in pain), but today I got a deeeeLISH hummus/veggie lavash for $3.99 that I'd definitely recommend trying. Careful, though. I was two-thirds done with it when my stupid left eye grabbed the calorie content off the nutrition facts and I had to weep softly into my hands for a minute. Totaling 700 Calories, it definitely demands to be taken seriously.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

My hamster Edward is my Valentine

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. And for the first time since I was... ... ... seventeen? I don't have a fella to swoon over and make plans with. **excited fist pumps**

For pretty much seven solid years I was bananas about boys and even when "single" I had one foot in a past or future relationship. I heard so many friends and family members tell me that I needed to spend time with myself in order to blossom and find true happiness. The funny part is, now that I've been on my own for pretty much exactly a year, I can't even imagine how I could ever have had someone so up in my business all the time. Or, more correctly, how I could've had so much energy to be the psycho girlfriend all up in THEIR business all the time, whether they wanted it or not (probably not, though, probably not). 

I spent last Valentine's Day with my then on-again-off-again-and-again-and-again boyfriend. We went to Joshua Tree to hike and camp and rub dirt on our faces in the name of love. I think what REALLY ended up happening was that we broke up for the fiftieth time, I sobbed myself hoarse, and then we had to cancel the hiking and come home early because I got scabies and my limbs and part of my face were covered in oozing red sores. Such a sexy vacay.

I can't believe a year has passed. I think my metamorphosis went something like:
hyper-dramatic I-would-do-anything-for-love-as-long-as-it's-irrational girlfriend-----> Jersey-Shore-status drunken hoe-bag------> Larry David.

And you know what? I feel pret-tay, pret-tay good about that.

Random side note: I'd like to welcome my BFF Bex to the vegan community!! She decided to make the move today after being vegetarian for years and eating healthier than anyone else I've ever met. Yay Bex!! I promise to never make fun of you for ordering lettuce with a side of lettuce and essence of lettuce EVER again! (Just kidding, I totally will.) **more excited fist pumps**

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Social awkwardness is not a choice

Don't worry Mom, I'm sober.

So I just moved to Encinitas after living in Santa Barbara for seven years, and I gotta say that the people here seem so refreshingly and shockingly genuine and sure of themselves. I'm not used to it yet, and to be honest I just don't know how to interact with them. I have eons of experience in the service industry (you know, not to brag or anything.... You're jealous.), but I guess it was a whole different ball game in Santa Barbara, because we all just fake-faced each other and did our best to have as minimal contact between worker and customer as possible. Then, we'd move two inches to the left so we were partly shielded by a plastic plant and we'd talk shit about the customer we just wished a good night. "Did you SEE that snaggle tooth on table 39??" and "That old shitbag just snapped his fingers at me AGAIN!! I swear to God, if he does that shit ONE more time--"... you get the point. At my new restaurant, working the cash register feels more like I'm being animal-tested for the label of Socially Inept. The customers we get are typically environmentally-conscious, CARING individuals, and it SHOWS. You can't half-ass a response with these people. I'll never forget the lady who asked me if the turkey in the turkey sandwich was lunch meat. I'm meat-retarded, so I thought hey, it's meat and it's served at lunch. So, YES! She made a face like I'd ripped out her kidney and stuffed it up my nose just for laughs. So... NO. Apparently "lunch meat" is a mish-mash of animal-y parts that is blended together into a pearlescent mass and sliced for non-Encinitans to chomp on in ignorant bliss. (Feel free to call me out on the fact that I STILL don't know what I'm talking about.) My restaurant serves organic, hormone-free, sliced roasted turkey on its sandwiches, which pleased the lady and she forgave me for sounding like an idiot when I repeated forty times that I didn't understand her question.

And it's not just what they're buying that they care about. Encinitans care about YOU, their server. When they ask how my day is going and I answer by saying, "Would you like to eat inside today or out?" their faces fall at my brusqueness and they sadly set the menu down and Eeyore-slump away, stopping only once they're at the doorstep to look back and let me see that one silent tear that falls for my insincerity. I'm finding it SO HARD to shake myself out of robot-mode. One of the most unsettling differences (for me, anyway) is that the people around here aren't in a hurry. They just mosey on over from their afternoon yoga sesh looking for some sauteed tempeh and organic baby greens. These are the people who can call you "brother" and smile at you and you feel so incredibly honored by the title, even though you're a girl and it was kinda a weird thing to call you, come to think of it. And then they'll hit you with the kicker, their most potent form of unadulterated love and compassion and warmth: the eyes of Jesus. These people can stare into your eyes shamelessly for apparently ANY amount of time. There's no need for them to flit their gaze away nervously or blink like normal people or even to look with their eyes when getting money out of their wallets while simultaneously threading a needle and teaching sign language to that deaf chimpanzee over there. Encinitans' eyes have all evolved into warm pools of hope and whispered lullabies. Their pupils crook their pupil fingers at you and beckon you to sway like hula daisies in a back-and-forth dance of white light. My robot reflexes are not cut out for this.

I find it humorous (but only when I'm safe in the confines of my own home...now that I have one, anyway) that I, a person who excels in the art of Sucking at Social Interactions, am in a line of work that involves interacting with hundreds of people every day. In hindsight, I can see that I'm kinda screwed from the get-go because my brain doesn't care about being cool, and in fact my brain is a Harry Potter-loving, ghost-fearing fool of an organ who loses itself in daydreams every .5 seconds. It's not FAIR that that's the brain they're giving me to manage a restaurant.

A typical customer transaction when I'm working the cashier position enters the red-alert zone for extreme awkwardness in a matter of ten seconds. This is because I have a chronic humming disease that kicks in, oh, ALWAYS. The customer walks up to the register to see a glossy-eyed possible albino staring thirty-five degrees to the left humming Lady Gaga in somber tones with a zombie face vacant of all expression. He says "Hi..." in an I-want-to-order-food-but-am-worried-you-just-had-a-stroke kind of way. I am startled but am too lazy to visibly have a reaction, so I slowly turn to him and mumble into my chin that, sorry, I was humming and what would you like? He says, "Uh...wait what?" And I repeat the question, now determined to act like HE'S the weird one and I'm just there doing my job, taking those orders. He's then lost all trust in the situation, and we start talking at the same time, grunting intermittently at each other until one of us shouts out in pent-up angst (usually me) DO YOU WANT MUSTARD WITH THAT?!! (or him) BEANS GIVE ME GAS, CAN I GET A SALAD INSTEAD?!! There is an instant wave of relief when the order has been placed, and suddenly it's aaaaall good, we're just waiting on him to get his money, look at that he's getting it now, no worries, la la la. It's at this point that I am lulled into a sense of safety and the endorphins of achievement cause me to babble drunkenly like I've known the guy forever since we just competed against each other in register-battle. "Have you ever had one of those kombuchas?" I'll ask, and then carry on with, "I loooove kombucha. I think cuz it tastes a little bit like beer, but like magic happy beer that's good for you. My mom used to MAKE her own kombucha, you know. Yeah, I remember, when I was little I'd always wonder what the hell my mom was drinking cuz you'd see her fill her cup from this big urine-colored jar of liquid that had an alien-looking mushroom floating on the top. Aaaahh, so funny...." And at this point the man is walking away backwards, and now I'm angry because why is he leaving me now that we're best friends? I then frown at his obvious lack of people skills and rub vodka-smelling hand sanitizer on my fingers and forearms, humming "Bad Romance" softly to soothe my burned ego. Aaaaand... REPEAT PERFORMANCE FROM ABOVE.

I'm hoping that being around these fool-proof, flexible yogans will help me to have a better sense of who I am and how to communicate with others without feeling so terrifyingly aware of myself the whole time. *fingers crossed in eager anticipation* And if not, oh well, it'll give me something to write about in my blog.

Unrelated note: Listen to this song! "Brand New Shoes" by She and  Him. I heart it.


Second unrelated note: If you eat nutritional yeast, you should store it in a dark container. If it's stored in clear glass, the light destroys the RIBOFLAVIN which helps with the health of your skin and vision and energy metabolism!! It's all in Becoming Vegan: The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-Based Diet by Brenda Davis, R.D. and Vesanto Melina, M.S., R.D.

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah-ah! Roma-roma-mamaa! Ga-ga-ooh-la-la! Want your bad ro-o-mance!



Beer belly blues

Well, I'm slightly drunk, just getting back from a hippie-firepit-fest that was pretty awesome, but I feel like I need to follow my nightly blogging ritual that's apparently happening. Ironically, the beer in my flab-abs is related to today's topic of discussion.

I'm at a crossroads for a focal point here. It's either the fact that I'm a slight alcoholic or it's the fact that I've gained a lot of weight recently. Luckily, the two are joined so merrily hand-in-hand that I think I'll be able to splash around the page between both subjects and still appear to be making some sort of point.

I think I'll start with the whole gaining-a-lot-of-weight thing. Fun! It's been this last year, really, where this unfortunate transformation has occurred. There are some sure-fire signs of gaining weight that are actually really comical when they aren't downright depressing. The first sign is that your normal clothes just don't seem to flatter you very well, so you start putting together the loosest version of your usual attire. Somewhere along the way, starting about October, it suddenly became apparent to me that normal pants just weren't working for me anymore. This is when I entered my "leggings" phase. Leggings+long tops= fashionable way to avoid wearing real pants. Then, a couple weeks later, I realized that it wasn't just WEARING leggings that was important, it was the PLACEMENT of the waistband that was REALLY what it's all about. The key is to put the fitted elastic part riiiiiight around the MIDDLE of your protruding gut, so it cuts it in half and confuses the situation enough that it almost looks like it's flat! This is how I got through most of the fall and the beginning of winter. Then something horrible happened. The sheer volume of myself started taking on balooning effects, so the cutting-off-the-middle miracle wasn't happening anymore. Instead, my gut was hanging over my pants like a defiant pouting bottom lip. This is when my latest plan came in to play. Hey, I might not fit in to NORMAL pants, but I can sure fit into BIGGER pants!! I started shopping the largest size sections, and this weird psychological effect took place in my brain. If I wore super large pants, they'd be a little big on me, and I'd feel like I'd lost weight because my pants were just sagging off my hate-handles (whoever called them "love handles" was a fucking liar). This then led to wearing baggier Tshirts, and I actually managed to confuse myself into thinking I was getting SMALLER, because my fleshy limbs were swimming around in Hefty-sized fabric ensembles.

What's funny is that I'm speaking about this occurrence in the past tense. There's no wizened ending to this story, I'm just starting to like baggy shirts is all. Let's pretend this transitions into the other topic at hand, the whole pseudo-alcoholic (yay) thing.

I have NO idea how to know if I'm an alcoholic or not. I've often heard that if you drink alone, you're an alcoholic. I, however, think that's BULLSHIT, cuz I happen to enjoy my own company VERY much, so drinking alone for me is just like adding some hot pink pizzazz to an already agreeable situation. I don't even think I would be feeling this concern if it weren't for a recent incident with my boss/lady/landlord....

The first night I moved in to my own place, my brother-in-law stuffed all my homeless shelter into his studly Vigor of a car and took me to the nearby Riteaid to get a ceremonial case of classy Budlight with Lime. I drank one bottle that night, we drank a few as a group the next night, and took a few to his and my sister's house. So the next day, I discarded the empty box in the empty recycling container on my new property, not realizing that this might make me appear to be quite full of beer. My boss/landlady didn't say anything directly, but instead decided to hint about ways that alcohol affects people poorly. She went so far as to say that people under the influence of drugs are more susceptible to the body-snatching spirits in limbo. When I laughed and said "oh darn" because I was picturing dumbasses with dumbass angel dust sprinkling from their dumbass noses, she made sure to specify that by DRUGS, she meant alcohol. Which, by the way, no one would ever do, unless she were trying to call you out in some sort of round-about passive-aggressive fashion. I pretended never to let on to where she was coming from (in true alcoholic form) and instead just got reeeeeeal good at being sneaky with ma' booze bottles. That bottle of wine I bought last week? Just SEE if you wanna wrestle it from the used tampon and hair-ball wreathe surrounding it. I mean, seriously, what a BITCH for being concerned about the well-being of my soul and shit. ASSHOLE!

I have yet to resolve the disagreement between alcoholism and veganism. When I do, I am quite confident that my frowning belly tire will smile itself widely into oblivion, and my beer belly blues will be cured. In the meantime, I'm still figuring out the facts of fish bladders involved in wine filtering (barf) and such, so my final statement on the matter is yet to come. For now? All I have to say is that I may not be losing weight, but knowing that no one suffers for the deliverance of my food sure makes me FEEL lighter. God, I'm so FUCKING profound....

In conclusion...well... I probably need to lose some weight and gain some soberness, so I'll keep you posted. In the meantime I'll be cutting my window drapes Sound-of-Music style and turning them into fat pants, so please... please take pity on me and all eardrums around me when I break into song about vegan girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, especially when I'm pretty sure those sashes were made by creatures whose heroic feats were unknown to the fashion world.

Friday, February 11, 2011

If you don't like someone, don't let him give you a hickie

So, I have an Asian Marine from Minnesota stalking me.

And *SPOILER ALERT* it has something to do with the title of this post. Unfortunately.

This is one of those stories that I kind of wanted to carry with me to the grave, but I figure that part of moving to a new town and becoming the best possible version of me includes telling embarrassing stories about my private life on the Internet for anyone with opposable thumbs (do you even need those to use a computer actually?) to be able to access. And so...

I have an Asian Marine from Minnesota stalking me. I met him in the usual way I meet the super awesome guys I always attract: I entered a room with a sign taped to my forehead that read "If you're unsure about yourself and not that cool, come talk to me! I'll make you feel GREAT about yourself!" You see, I'd forgotten to take the sign down, because I'd forgotten that part of moving to a new town and becoming the best version of myself ALSO included not pretending to like people just because I don't know how to hurt their feelings. So I walked into this bar (I wish I had a good joke to finish this off with) with my application because I was there to meet the manager, and this little feminine voice piped up on my right with a squeaky "hey there!" I turned to see a less masculine version of the cartoon boyfriend in Lilo and Stitch. He was even wearing the necklace and everything. Well, he was actually a lot less tan. And a lot less...muscle-y... and had the strict tasteless Marine haircut... and not a cute face... so I'm not sure why I made that comparison at all, but it's apparently the best I can come up with. He was all smiles and happy wine times (it was a wine bar, really rad actually, called 3rd Corner Bistro) and he started picking the lint off the shoulder of my jacket when he heard I was meeting the manager. This was embarrassing for many reasons, one of which was that my brother-in-law was sitting in the car outside and later asked me why the man in the restaurant kept petting me. I went through with my meeting the manager and all, and Lilo's sister's boyfriend's look-alike kept butting in and making unwanted jokes with the guy like they were best friends. I quickly realized that he was "that guy." You know him, the guy who hangs out at the same bar everyday and pretends that that qualifies him to not only be super tight with the staff, but also to pretend that he's ONE of them? I call them all Harpers for personal reasons, but they are essentially professional bar-flies. I tried to escape unscathed, but his cartoon hand shot out and he grabbed me and said all cool-like that since I was new he should get my number and gimme a hand if I ever needed someone to guide me around. I genuinely couldn't think of anything to say, but it honestly seemed like there was a 50/50 chance he was gay, and there was this cougar sitting at the end of the bar smiling smugly at me-- all I knew was that I needed to get out of there, so I gave him those goddamn ten digits of my freedom. I then said "K bye Mike" as I ran out the door and he said "It's Matt." So that was cool.

My phone later informed me that "Matt Wine" (I'm really clever) had texted me. And then again, a few days later. Please withhold your judgement when I say that after a certain amount of text-harassment on his part, I eventually agreed to meet up with him. In my defense, I was living on a couch in my sister's living room and wanted to pretend to have some semblance of a social life. In your defense... I'm retarded. I met up with him for drinks at 3rd Corner, which was actually difficult from the start because I stood there for ten minutes looking for the 40-pound Hawaiian-looking surfer boy/girl I remembered, and it turns out he was actually the grown man with a serious military-do' whose back was facing (backing?) me the whole time. THAT threw me off. Why did I remember him as such a puff of dandelion seeds?

A-HA! Because he spoke with a lisp, wore a rather lovely woman stone around his neck, said his favorite movie hands-down was Hitch, and raved about Taylor Swift enough to make me sweat out of extreme situational discomfort. We drank some wine, which helped to make the awkward silences more buzzy and tannin-y and then he asked if I wanted to see the "highlight level" that night. Which is military code for a full moon's reflection on the ocean, and also for "Hey do you wanna makeout with me." I was only semi-interested in the first meaning, and mostly MEH about the second one, but I have this inherent problem where I am NEVER the one to end an evening. True story. I will NEVER be the one to leave a party until all the booze is gone and people are competing for soft surfaces on which to PTFO. I think that means Pass The Fuck Out, by the way. I'm pretty sure, but if not, sorry, I was just trying it out. Anyway, I won't even go to bed in my own HOUSE until everyone else is going to bed too. It's like this weird disorder I have where I don't wanna miss out on anything. So I agreed to extend our date (that word leaves a poop taste in my mouth) to a walk on Moonlight Beach in true wanna-be romantic fashion.

As for the moon's reflection on the water: that was nice. As for the oh-okay-suddenly-he's-busting-a-make-out-move-on-me part... ya, not so much. I can definitely say that it took having a random Sally-voiced, country-diva-loving goober trying to make out with the greater portion of my head and neck to realize that one of my biggest flaws is, well, everything I just wrote. I am pretty sure that they teach you this way back in kindergarten-- DON'T MAKE-OUT WITH PEOPLE YOU DON'T LIKE. I must've been sick that day, or else I was too busy being the weird girl chewing up all the community pencils (sadly true) because it's taken me THIS long to realize that you don't have to be interested in people just because they're interested in you. Maybe I'm just...special... but there I was at age 24.9 having this WHOOSH moment. So I dismissed myself from the party and went home, feeling a surge of empowerment and self-recognition that I hadn't felt maybe ever. It filled me with optimism as I quietly unlocked the door to my sister's house, pulled out my green sheet to throw on my couch/bed, and went in to the bathroom to brush my teeth. It was the turning of an epic leaf in my life, a symbolic journey to-- OH HOLY JESUS, was that a fucking HICKIE ON MY NECK?!!! God had interrupted my moment of enlightenment to boast about the purple fingerpaint of irony smudged all over my albino-white throat.

The good news is, it was my first week starting my new job as manager of a restaurant where the uniform is a crew-neck T-shirt. No no, wait... yeah no that was the worst news EVER. As fate would have it, I DID trade in the sign formerly taped to my forehead. I traded it in for a leopard-print scarf tied fiercely tight around the middle of my neck in 85-degree weather and for weird looks from all my new co-workers as I periodically yanked the fabric tighter and tried to ignore the fact that the sweat on my face was making my eyebrows glitter.

I have since been dodging all contact with my now-stalker-status Matt Wine, and am determined to join the ranks of those wise individuals who know just when to call it a night.

**(single white female) would like to apologize to her brother Sam for any side effects he may experience after reading this post, including (but not limited to) extreme projectile vomiting.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Cool people are afraid of the dark

So I'm almost twenty-five years old, and I'm living alone for the first time.

BEFORE living alone, it occurred to me that I am the biggest scaredy-cat in the whole world, and I started to warn people close to me that they should be expecting late night phone calls from a tiny-voiced me saying I can't get out of bed to use the bathroom because there is without a doubt someone waiting to kill me under my bed, etc., etc. However, it's become blatantly and instantly clear to me that there is only one real fear I have that enters my mind like a creeping crescendo-ing ant trail every time that 1.) I am ALONE and 2.) it is NIGHTTIME. And that, my friends, is my all-consuming fear of...

 (drum-roll please)

SEEING

A

GHOST.

I realize this is not the most USEful or inTELLigent fear. But it's been what I picture every time I get spooked, for as long as I remember. Psychos, murderers--PFFFT-- they're all human and do humanly things that may suck but at least remain within the realm of things that are physically possible. GHOSTS on the other hand, who knows what the FUCK they can do. I've never SEEN a ghost (and yes, I just took a timeout to knock on wood after typing that) so it's even SCARIER to me to think that I have no idea what one would even LOOK like.

I can't believe I'm typing about this at night. Such a stupid idea.

Anyway, it just so happens that the woman I am renting my new place from is a spiritual healer. And somehow, no idea how actually, she overheard me talking about this ginormous fear I have that I'm going to see a ghost sometime when I'm by myself at night. She asked me to elaborate, so I told her how years ago the father of an ex-boyfriend ruined my whole life because he thought he was being kind and he told me that I was a sensitive spirit and I would be very susceptible to the presence of spirits and "ghosts" as I call them. He was smiling warmly and thinking I would be flattered, but I'm sure the grotesque slack-face expression of horror that came over me made him feel a little bad. I fucking hope so. I have seriously been ON THE LOOKOUT ever since. Like, okay, this is how it goes.... I'll be by myself, la dee da, maybe closing up the restaurant I used to manage, so it's nighttime and I'm alone and yeah. Then I'll think, "Oh hey, wait, you're alone and it's dark. That's kinda creepy." And THEN, I'll start hearing little noises, and feeling this sudden awareness of my body in the room, like that feeling you get when you can tell someone's looking at you. And slowly, I'll start getting more freaked out to the point where my cheeks flush, my ears ring, and at this point it doesn't matter WHAT I see, whether it's my own shadow or a kitten with a Jesus halo, I'm GOING to FREAK out. It's usually best at this point to get to "safety," which is usually where other people are to save me from the thing that was creeping me out that totally exists in the first place.

Oh yeah, so ANYWAY, I was talking to my landlord (who also happens to be my new boss, but that's not important) about this, and she took me very seriously because, like I said, she's a spiritual healer. And she said that automatically I'm stronger than any disembodied spirit because I have a body (and actually I have a lot of body going on, so that made me feel a little better). She ALSO said that if I feel a spirit's presence and I don't want it there, I just have to announce to it loudly THREE TIMES, "By the power invested in me from [insert some sort of religious entity or something here], I COMMAND you to leave." She then said that when someone has been healing people long enough, a tunnel of white light forms above her healing table and shoots up into the...sky(?) and that wandering spirits are attracted to the energy because they feel that she can help them. It was at THIS point that I remembered that her HEALING room is *nervous laughter* on the other side of my BEDroom. Yaaaayy.

So after this half awesome half not-so awesome conversation, I returned to my studio. And promptly got to work. It was about 6:00 at night, so definitely dark enough to get some insta-heebie jeebies when I walked inside with a head full of images of bodiless spirits spilling through the adjoining wall from her healing room. I got my best "teacher voice" on and started COMMANDING away. The best part is that I kind of forgot what she'd said the universal lingo was for shooing away spirits, and also I was nervous because I could just feeeeeel those spirit eyes judging me, you know? So I heard my shaky wanna-be-strong Disney-mouse-voice saying "Begone!" a lot of times, and I felt good about the assertive look on my face and the firmness of the way I was holding my jaw.... Yeah, it was a good jaw face. Anyway, then I waited in silence for a minute. Johanna (my boss/landlady) said that I would instantly be able to feel the lifting of the weight of the spirit's presence. I'm not sure if I did or not, but I maaaaay have seen like a white silky cloud-ish substance escape through my living room skylight. I mean, probably.

Toootally.

All in all, I'd have to say that after my educational conversation with Johanna, and after trying out the standard method of ghost-banning, I think I still feel most confident in my previous method of soothing my fear whenever it gets unbearable: I log on to facebook and lose myself in status updates and drunk pictures and "friending" and "unfriending" people until I'm so distracted that the ghost clearly gets tired of my indifference to its presence and wafts away pouting. Good ol' trusty facebook.

On a completely unrelated note, apparently no one gets enough Vitamin D from sunlight anymore due to sunscreen and indoor jobs and whatnot, so I'm going to start taking a supplement of like 5 micrograms daily of Vitamin D2 (animal-product-free), and it's lookin' like any other non-milk drinkers should do the same. Whattup!!

P.S. What you DON'T know is that halfway through typing this post I had to get up to go tinkle and thought I heard some weird noises slash saw the shower curtain moving so, yeah, you bet I commanded that spirit away. I'm totally kicking ass at this living alone thing, by the way.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

So THIS is what it's like to have a blog....

I wanted to start a blog to post art projects and talk about vegan food and all my interests culminating around those two things... and then I gave my blog self the first name that popped in to my head, which didn't relate to anything that I wanted to talk about. So we're off to a good start. The good news is that I think I'm funny, and since I'm probably the only one who will read this, I'm going to go ahead and be proud of myself.

What I learned today:

1.) Don't drop statements like "Oh I love your necklace, a fish is my spirit animal!" into casual conversation with strangers. It may SEEM like a normal thing to say, but apparently it just isn't, and in fact can ruin EVERYTHING.

2.) If you're going to wax your eyebrows for the first time in your whole life, don't do it right before work. And if you DO, just own up to it and don't try to hide it with three layers of colorful eye shadow. It just makes things weird.

And finally...

3.) If someone interrupts you mid-hip-swivel in your Zumba class to ask you if you're Swedish because of the high-quality red hue your skin has taken on, don't be embarrassed, be flattered! Clearly you're reggae-marching and shaking it well enough that the only alarming factor about you is your tomato face. You rock!

That's it for now. Let's pretend I wrote about food and art and becoming vegan, cuz I think that's what I was supposed to be doing.